OF STORMS AND FAREWELLS

A good few weeks ago after I came out of hospital yet again we had a severe Highveld storm and lightning cracked outside my window while I cowered in bed with my little Dachshund, Jack.

On March 13^th I had a right hip replacement at Helen Joseph Hospital, a government teaching hospital. Here I have to tell my South African readers that the surgeon was Professor Jacobs. He and his team were fantastic and the hip is charging along well. The less said about the nursing the better.

I had just been to Xray department and was being pushed up a long corridor with an incline by a really light framed little nurse when along came Dr. Grey, Prof Jacobs’s second in command in the theatre. He took the wheel chair from the nurse and asked me if my heart was ok. I nodded and the next thing the wheel chair was on its back wheels and Dr. Grey was charging up the incline with this chariot, me aboard at a good rate of knots to arrive without any sign of breathlessness at the lift. The little nurse came up quite some time later to take me aloft.

Unfortunately I had to go back a week later for tests that revealed a small gastric ulcer that was bleeding. Am being treated with a dreadful drug, Lansoloc, that is apparently  wonderful but the side effect is chronic exhaustion. So I hope my readers will accept my apology for such a long gap of blogs.

Dr Ahmed, the registrar who was dealing with me shook his head while perusing my file. He complained that he could not understand this surname and kept muddling my first name with it. I told him that it was an Irish surname.

The good doctor broke into an Irish accent as genuine as you could find in County Down and said “So you would be knowing all about Saint Paddy then?” I had to laugh and admire his accent! Hospital is not without its amusing moments!

Back to storms. I well remember being caught in a storm amongst giant baobabs in Botswana. I cowered in my little tent becoming very worried as lighting landed nearby. I imagined my new darling 4 x 4 Isabella Isuzu and remembered – yes I am blonde – that she had rubber tyres so translocated myself immediately. Later the next day I was told I had done the right thing!

The next tale is a sailing one. I had a share in a Miura yacht some 32 feet or so designed by Van der Stadt who built yachts to withstand our daunting Cape waters. There was a race up to Saldanha Bay via Lamberts Bay to the North and my skipper Rod White suggested we compete. Now Meerteufel as her name was, was not the fastest afloat but Rod was still put out when Mike Wintle, now sadly gone, brought a case of beer on board for afters. Rod shook his head, being used to the real racing stuff when weight was kept to a minimum.

My daughter Susan and I were the other members of the crew. We set off from I think Cape Town and by the time we passed the Saldanha heads were into a good blow. We ran before the wind with the spinnaker up surfing down the swells while Mike clung onto an unresponding helm but we were relishing the excitement of it all. At around midnight we were off the coast of Lambert’s Bay looking for the buoy around which we had to turn that supposedly had a little red light on top of it.

Out of the maelstrom of the storm came Susan’s voice. “What are we doing in the middle of the night looking for a little red light?” I could not have put it better. However there was the light and we had to go about into the teeth of the storm, pulling down the spinnaker in a flurry of spume and swearing and finally getting the rebellious spinnaker down below while Meerteuful dutifully faced the huge swells beneath her keel. Up she went, down she went, shook herself like a Labrador out of water and took on the next one!

Sometime during the night the storm abated and dawn saw the sea much calmer. We were all on deck when on our port bow appeared a pod of Southern Right Whales. They were if you can call it that, dancing in the dawn, rearing out of the Prussian blue sea, their skins sparkling in the early dawn light and flipping back into the sea with mighty splashes! A sight to remember!

As we turned into the entrance to Saldanha Bay pulling down the sails and switching on the engine I hauled out a bottle of Old Brown sherry well loved by South Africans around the country! Just the thing to warm us up after the cold night.

I had a great friend, Bobby Bongers, who many a yachtsman will recall. Bobby built yachts and dinghys at Zeekoe Vlei. Bobby had departed from the old clinker built hulls and embraced the new method of moulds to turn out dinghy’s such as Finns and the like and was probably one of the first, at least at Zeekoe Vlei, to have a Flying Dutchman that he built himself. He became well known in yachting circles and we met by chance one year at Royal Cape Yacht Club. Bobby told me that he had sailed in the Fastnet Race the year of the terrible storm.

The yachts were racing when the Force 11 storm hit. Bobby said he abandoned the race and got as far away from the coast as he could before heaving to. He and his crew then sat at the radio and heard the true extent of the damage the storm was causing.

So many yachts were in distress that the largest maritime rescue operation in peacetime was launched. The Irish Navy was first on the scene but tankers and other shipping helped as well as all the resources the Uk could muster. The storm lasted three days. Royal Navy Helicopters tried to get yachtsman off their boats while coastguards and other rescue teams did their utmost but 15 yachtsmen died. Later it was found that two yachts survived by getting away from the coast and heaving to, one of which was Bobby’s.

The last time I saw Bobby was at Zeekoe Vlei yacht club’s opening cruise when he happened to be there as his brother Eric, a yachtsman in his own right, was dying. The club was packed and Bobby noticed me looking for a seat. He beckoned me to where he was sitting on a table at the back and helped me up. We embraced but he continued to hold my hand.

Bobby had met a lovely lady, Mia and the two of them were running a B & B near the Hamble in the UK. He turned to me and told me that he remembered our times together and often thought of them. Then he told me that there was something medically wrong and he would not be seeing me again. A lump had to be swallowed before I succumbed to tears but I squeezed his hand back.

I later heard that Eric had died and Bobby had returned to the UK. By now I was travelling Southern Africa and was on the banks of the Zambezi in Livingstone enjoying a Mozi beer. Some tourist had left a Cape Town newspaper on the table and I glanced through it.

There under the obituaries was Bobby’s photo and a write up of his many yachting achievements and his contribution to the sport. I sat there, Mozi in hand remembering the last time I saw him. I looked at the paper and looked at the swift Zambezi flowing to Mozambique and the Indian Ocean and was tempted to throw the paper into it. Somehow I thought that would epitomize Bobby’s journey through life; however pollution came to mind and I tore it up and put it in the waste paper basket to hand.

With a last swallow of beer I left for my appointment to fly the flight of Angels over the Victoria Falls. My companion was an elderly lady and she told me that she had ‘done’ Africa in one day! Well I have been travelling Southern Africa for years and I promise you I have not ‘done’ Africa yet!

Above the mighty falls another memory of Bobby emerged. He had gone on a fishing trip to Bazaruta one year and brought me a shell that he had picked up on the beach that I treasure still. Then I knew nothing about Mozambique or the Bazaruto Archipelogo but have since been to most of those islands.

That brings me to the recent cyclones in Mozambique. Cyclone Idai swept across the flood plain of the Zambezi where it empties itself into the Indian Ocean near Beira causing havoc and many deaths. Well I remember my first visit to Beira. My friend Luis bade me stop along the straight road that led to the city and disappeared into the grass. A short while later he returned brandishing large fresh water prawns for our supper! I looked across the vast grassland that was in fact soaked with the water of the Zambezi flood plain and wondered then what a flood would do to it.

I was amazed by the wide boulevards paved with stones in Beira and research later told me that they were the remains of the broken buildings of Sofala, that legendary City of Gold. Sofala’s history goes well back before the Portuguese for the Arab traders anchored there, sending word to the interior for slaves and gold. The actual anchorage was not good because of sand bars so the new port Beira was situated further north. Sadly Beira has been nearly destroyed by cyclone Idai.

Incidentally my children Mick and Susan’s Grandmother was born and raised there while her father was head of the Union Castle Line for East Africa. Their grandmother was wooed by Greg Joyce and finally married in that beautiful white cathedral in Maputo.

Some years ago my dear Isabella Isuzu took my friends Jenny, Luis and I

North to Pemba. This was before the bridge over the Zambezi was built and we crossed at Caia a little town near where David Livingstone’s wife is buried.  We crossed on a pont and navigated through the myriad detours that were there to enable the constructors to build the new road. A stop on the legendary island of Iha da Mozambique that at one time was the capital of Mozambique and Goa in India! Here we visited the old fort San Sebastian and Luis could not wait to get out off the island for the bad vibes of the people thrown into a pit to die at the fort.

After a long and wearing journey we arrived at Nampula where we aimed to stay the night. We stopped so that Luis could price a B & B and both Jenny and I were bursting at that time. No problem for Jen, she wore a long skirt and stepped out of the car. The next thing I heard a waterfall and it was Jenny calmly relieving herself from beneath the skirt! But then she was a veteran traveler and told me that when she crossed the red sea she clutched her hot-water bottle to her bosom all the time as it was filled with gin!

Ultimately we reached Pemba and here I have to say a very sad farewell to the islands of the Quirimba Achipelego decimated by cyclone Kenneth. All the merchant fleets of the world could anchor in Pemba Bay and there would still be room for more. Mozambique has so many of these deep bays. According to rumour German U-boats sneaked into the bay at night during the second world war to recharge their batteries. The bay is wide open to South Easterly winds and an old harbor pilot said all his grey hairs came from docking ships when this wind was blowing!

We stayed at Russel’s camp outside and along the beach from Pemba We left Luis there with Isabella Isuzu while we visited the islands. First was Medjumbe, low and flat, as the aircraft came in to land I was convinced it would land in the sea! There was an old lighthouse at the point but that is probably gone now. The water is crystal clear and you can see right to the bottom!

Our next stop was Ibo Island. Most of the buildings were derelict with cheeping chickens and goats taking residence. The lodge overlooked the bay and was luxurious. It had been immaculately restored with an inner garden. That evening we dined on the roof of the main building with the setting sun and had large red crab legs for starters. Jenny would not eat them with her fingers so I had two! Their bodies were for the main course. She managed that with a fork! Here is a photo of the lodge after cyclone Kenneth.

Quilalea means ‘to sleep’, lala in Swahili. This beautiful island sleeps just 55km north of Pemba. The then owners Marjolaine & John Hewlet fell in love with the island and established a marine sanctuary there whilst they started a project of constructing the entire retreat from natural sources. We were there when the owners were absent and were lucky to have the island to ourselves.

The young diving master, a girl who looked as if she should still be in school invited me to swim out to the shelf that dropped just off the beach, some twelve metres. I was very doubtful not having swum any distance for a good few years. However she reassured me that she would be next to me all the way and I could not miss this. Accordingly I managed the distance and was treated to the best snorkel I have ever had! It was amazing with every kind of fish or creature you could imagine beneath me. I felt that if I stretched my hand down I could touch a parrot fish! The return swim was nothing after that.

On our last evening we went on a sunset cruise. Our skipper and his one man crew were a jolly lot and produced a bottle of rum! Now Jen had sailed across the Atlantic and was soon in good voice, standing on the prow singing “Yo Ho Rio! We’re off to the Rio Grande!” This was followed by some raunchy sailors ditties with the crew egging her on.

The bottle of rum was diminishing at a rapid rate and Jen was a trifle unsteady when we landed and bid out jolly crew goodbye! The next morning a light aircraft arrived to take us back to Luis and Isabella Isuzu and the long trek home.

I am sure after these tales you will appreciate how sad I am to know that many of these islands may well never recover. So many memories that I hope will remain in these blogs to tell what it was like.

Amidst it all Jose the Mozambican man who has looked after our property in Tofo has weathered a major hernia operation and is on the mend as am I. Keep checking in because I have a lot of things to write about – so much to catch up including a new novella I hatched up while in hospital called I  May Not Be An Angel . . .!

RECOLLECTIONS OF AN EIGHTY YEAR OLD

I turned eighty years old yesterday, the 26^th January. I was born in 1939 and the Second World War began in the September. On these warm nights I have lain awake thinking about the events I have seen and experienced during these years.

I think the earliest memory was of the air raid sirens that would require us to gather at Aunty Phyllis’s house nearby. I remember the house clearly and I must have been three years with the war into its third year. I remember my father in his Cape Town Highlanders kilt being photographed with his mates,  however he did not pass  the medical due to a missing little toe and in any event he was needed by the railways to maintain the steam engines that pulled the trains taking soldiers up the East Coast where they were to engage the German army in German East Africa. One of his mates never returned and another came back with one leg.

My paternal grandmother, Granny Goodwin who was Cornish, was born on a ship in Sydney harbour (I never did hear the full story). Granny had bought me a sunhat, a pair of sunglasses and a little cardboard suitcase. She lived opposite us at Hazendal that is now Sybrand Park in Cape Town. One day I was very cross with my mother so donned the sunhat, packed the suitcase and ran away to Granny Goodwin! The next morning she gave me mealie pap (maize meal porridge) for breakfast and I hated it so ran back!

My two cousins Jean and Tom Swarbreck lived nearby, as did Tommy Webb, another cousin. My father had grown a field of prize strawberries that were ready to harvest on his birthday on the 24^th October when we would enjoy them with my mother’s homemade ice cream that I still make for my grandchildren. One year the naughty boy cousins picked and ate the strawberries before the birthday and were given good hidings! Not to mention the sore tummies!

Every year my father would have a bet on the premier horse races such as the Metropolitan Handicap in Cape town and the Durban July in Durban. He would have a bet and take part in the railway workshop sweepstake. I was six when the Durban July was to be run and I fancied a horse called Mowgli who was favorite at 9-2 along with his rival Radlington who was 12 – 1.

Mowgli as a two year old had dropped in the middle of a race. He was odds on favourite and was racing to what seemed certain victory when he checked in his stride and dropped back falling as if he had been poleaxed. The veterinarians put it down to heat stroke.

Because of this incident my father was convinced the horse would not win and changed my bet! Mowgli and Radlington were locked together at the finish and the judge took ten minutes to decide that Mowgli had won by a couple of inches. My father had to pay me out as a matter of honour! I had no idea then that horses would play a prominent part in my later life or that I would write a novel called July Fever that would be launched at the Durban July in 1980 to rave reviews in the press.

Durban July Photo Finish 1952

When I was seven and attending Observatory Girls school my parents sold their house, and decided to go into a partnership with our neighbours, Lalu and Taffy Ovenstone and buy a chicken farm in Kuilsriver. They decided that I had to continue at that school and I had to walk three miles to the station in Kuilsriver, take a train to Salt River, change onto the suburban line and get off at Observatory. This was when I became aware of the race division in the country with separate carriages and benches for white and black people.

The second world war was over and in 1947 King George, Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, were due to visit South Africa arriving on the frigate Vanguard. My father promised that he would take me to the city to watch the ship arrive. Crowds were due to line the streets and the dock area. The day dawned and I was so excited to see all of the fanfare, but the morning was incredibly hot and my father’s prize pig, a huge animal, fainted with the heat. We spent the day pouring water over it while listening to the arrival on the radio! I was bitterly disappointed, but the pig recovered.

One afternoon on the way back from school my train was stopped at Bellville station and everyone told to disembark. It was explained that the line had to be cleared for the White Train carrying the Royal Family was due. Imagine my delight when I had a first class view of the King and Queen and the two princesses. The Station Master realized that I must be very hungry while waiting for my train to reappear and gave me a pastry with what looked like squashed flies in the middle but I ate every bit of it before my train arrived and delivered me safely to Kuilsriver where my mother was frantic with worry.

The Royal White Train

Later I learned that my mother’s cousin Amy Van der Schyff’s husband, Richard was a chauffeur for the Government Garage and had driven the Royals around Cape Town to all their appointments. He told us how Princess Margaret, a wonderful mimic, would take off all the dignitaries including General Smuts, the Prime Minister!

At the time my little sister, Veronica had polio and one leg was in calipers. She was pushed around the property in a pushchair and would ask for it to stop while she gazed into a wooded area. When asked what she was looking at she would say “A funny little man.”

Finally Lalu asked her to describe the little man. She did so and when next in the village Lalu asked about the previous owner who had died before we moved in. The description tallied with Veronica’s description. Apparently the owner had hated cars and declared that no vehicle would be allowed on his property! My parents had an electric blue Terraplane and the car would never start on the property but would once down the driveway and onto the farm road.

Behind the chicken runs was a stretch of fynbos the Afrikaans name for the indigenous vegetation now world famous for the spring flowers in the Cape, and I would love to walk through this veritable garden picking proteas and then selling the flowers on the farm road! The freedom fed my sense of adventure and my imagination. This experience would influence my life.

Holidays were spent on train journeys as my father had a first class free pass being a railway employee. We could plan our journey providing we did not retrace our route and loved travelling around the country listening to the sound of the train, tucked up in our bunks at night with the stars above. Meals in the dining car were special treats with spotless white linen, heavy silver cutlery and smart waiters while little stations passed by in the blink of an eye.

When I was ten my parents sold the farm and we moved to Fish Hoek on the Cape Peninsula. Fish Hoek nestles against the Cape Mountain chain on False Bay in the Indian Ocean. The Atlantic Ocean washes against the other side of the mountains. I joined the girl Guides and as a patrol leader took my patrol on weekend camping trips up the mountains. My friends and I loved the beach with its catwalk along the rocks where we would dive, pick up lost fishing sinkers and sell them back to the fishermen.

One day my friend and I were having fun in the waves on car tyre tubes when two dorsal fins approached. Our hearts stopped, thinking that they belonged to sharks but then the dolphins leapt over us and joined us in a great game. The two were photographed, made headlines and were named Fish and Hoek. They returned each summer for a few years.

I achieved my Queen’s Guide badge. Sir Herbert Packer was Admiral of the Simonstown naval basin. Britain owned the naval base at that time and I was presented with my badge by Lady Packer at Admiralty house. Lady Joy Packer was a writer and novelist. She wrote a book called Grey Mistress about her husband’s destroyer and the various ports they were stationed at over the years and a novel called The Valley of the Vines set in Constantia near Cape Town famous for its wines.

I grew up, left school and became a student nurse at Groote Schuur Hospital, that later became famous when Doctor Chris Barnard did the first heart transplant there. This was where I met my first love whose family had a yacht moored at Royal Cape Yacht Club. We would sail on the yacht around Cape Point to Simonstown or up the coast to Saldanha Bay. During the Suez crisis in 1956 we were returning from Saldanha in a thick fog and the many ships crowded the bay waiting their turn to dock having been rerouted around the Cape as the Suez canal was closed. Their various foghorn calls warned other vessels of their presence to prevent collisions, we were so afraid of bumping into one in the impenetrable fog on our way back to the yacht club.

My father, who was now Chief Foreman of Salt River works as were his father and grandfather before him, was sent to the UK and Europe to vet the new diesel engines that were being manufactured there by the great engineering companies for the changeover in South Africa from steam to diesel for the railway network. My mother was unhappy with my boyfriend and dispatched me on the Union Castle Mail ship to join my father. The mailboat as it was called left every Thursday from Cape Town docks and took 12 days to sail to Southampton.

A band played Now Is The Hour when the time came to say goodbye, and streamers waved in the breeze between passengers and loved ones left on the quay, tugs hooted and the ship began to move breaking the strands of streamers. Table Mountain towered above as the ship turned her bow towards the open sea leaving the Fairest Cape behind. My boyfriend’s yacht escorted the ship through the dock and out into the bay before finally turning back. The year was 1958, I was eighteen.

Union Castle Liner Leaving Cape Town

My father met me in Southampton where we were to take the boat train to London, then the famous Flying Scotsman on to Glasgow. There was a delay with the departure and eventually Father strode down the station, gave advice as to the fault and then we were off! One night in London and on to Glasgow covered in snow. I spent two weeks with a friend of my father’s, a district nurse visiting crofters in the Kyles of Bute before heading for Manchester where I replied to an advert for air hostesses for the brand new British European Airways. I was part of the second intake and my new friend Sue was in the first intake.

We flew Dakotas to the Channel Islands and Ireland. These aircraft had done service in the war as had the pilots who were of ex Battle of Britain vintage! On one occasion we had engine trouble and landed on deserted Biggin Hill, a famous airfield during the war. From Dakotas I was transferred from Manchester to Heathrow where I worked on Viscounts, a turbo-prop aircraft and finally the ill-fated Comet after which I returned to South Africa.

In later years I lived at Langebaan where the flying boats used to land after their long journey across Africa where one of their stops was at an island called Jungle Junction in the Zambezi River. How far air travel has progressed over the years especially with the wonderful Boeing aircraft.

Now we are in a new industrial revolution and certainly my youngest grandchildren will experience a very different world. There were to be many milestones as the years passed by, and no doubt I will write about them one day..